Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is a reading program specifically designed for first graders. It utilizes one-on-one tutoring on a short-term basis for low-achieving students. Dr. Marie M. Clay, an educator from New Zealand, developed the program. Dr. Clay observed several students in the mid-1960s that gave her a unique incite into children’s early reading difficulties. In the mid-1970s, she developed Reading Recovery with the help of other teachers and tested it in New Zealand. (1)

Dr. Clay graduated in 1946 with a senior scholarship in education. She completed her master thesis, “The Teaching of Reading to Special Class Children,” and was awarded her masters in 1948. In 1950, Dr. Clay had the opportunity to travel to the United States and study developmental and clinical child psychology at the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Welfare. (2)

In 1963, Dr. Clay wrote the dissertation, “Emergent Reading Behavior”. She observed one hundred children during their first year of school and described their weekly progress. With these observations, she developed an outline for the assessment and analysis of changes in the students reading. (2)

Dr. Clay has published several articles in professional journals, including; Reading: The Pat

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

PRINCIPLE #6

Fluency/Automaticity: Develop speed and fluency in reading and writing. Here, the students again make words using magnetic letters, trace words, write words and also use word cards. Several different components of the lesson foster the use of sounds and letter correspondence. The emphasis is on flexibility and on helping children learn principles to apply in solving many words.

In Reading Recovery, there is a strong emphasis on teaching for fluency and phrasing in oral reading. It is now used in most English-speaking countries including the United States, and has been redeveloped for use in Spanish and French languages. In the 30-minute Reading Recovery lesson, the majority of time is devoted to students' reading of continuous text. Teachers can use movement, verbal, and visual tools to help the student memorize the letter.

PRINCIPLE #2

Visual Perception of Letters:

Teach students to perceive and identify letters of the alphabet.

Reading Recovery is a short-term (12 to 20 weeks) safety net intervention.

Students begin to build a list of words that the child knows and can recognize quickly. Teachers select texts carefully to encourage fluency. (2)

Reading Recovery is based on ten simple principles:

PRINCIPLE #1

Phonological Awareness:

Teach students to hear the sounds in words. " A lesson consists of a variety of activities including reading and comprehending both familiar and new texts, writing a message of importance to the child, phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence, basic sight words, fluency, and teaching for strategic processing.

Approximate Word count = 1465
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.